Tuesday, 3 February 2015

A
prolific author and a versatile researcher, Professor Debiprasad
Chattopadhyaya is among those who gave a qualitative turn to the
methods and content of research in more disciplines than one.
Essentially a student of Philosophy – Indian and Western - he has
authored quite a few authentic works in the area of Philosophy, works
which have established themselves as both scholarly and popular.
They have been taken quite seriously by the world of scholarship not
only in our country but also in several other countries. One
indication of this is the numerous translations of his works in
different languages, Indian and foreign. His works on medical
science in ancient India as also his three volumes on the history of
science and technology in ancient India stand as evidence for his
signal contribution to historiography. Besides, he has distinguished
himself as a stalwart among Marxist philosophers through any number
of works directly dealing with the enunciations and application of
the Marxist philosophy. He is reputed to have produced copious
handbooks on a variety of topics related to science, history and
literature, particularly for children and novices in the respective
fields during his early years as an author. As G. Nagakumar has put
it, “the value of his work lies in the insights it provides into
the history, philosophy, science and social movements of India
through the ages. He was not interested in merely cataloguing
academic facts, but in providing powerful ideological weapons for the
masses in the struggle for social, cultural and economic change in
our country.” (The Observer of Business and Politics ,
21.05.1993)

Debiprasad
Chattopadhyaya

Born
on 19th November 1918, Debiprasad breathed his last on 8th
May 1993 after a 75 year long formidable innings of creativity,
fruitful and avid research, and extensive authorship. The first
volume of his History of Science and Technology : Ancient India
(Calcutta, 1986) came as welcome rains on the parched earth smeared
with imprecise and at times chauvinistic formulations of what passed
for science and history. The postulates of our ancient scientists,
their method of scientific pursuit, and how they arrived at them were
hardly ever given a cogent exposition. Not relating the empirical
observations and scientific experiments of the early era with the
social compulsions of the respective periods left many a historian in
an unenviable position. This lacuna was exceptionally made up by
Professor Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya who explored the dimensions of
science and the potentials of science between the period of first
urbanization in Harappa and Mohenjodaro and the second during the
Mauryan period. In 1991 appeared the second volume, reviewing which,
Robert Temple said in the reputed journal Nature (vol. 353,
5th September 1991) as follows: “ This is more than a
book on the history of science. It grapples directly with the issues
of whether India is to have any future or not. Chattopadhyaya is a
brave man, and he has tackled the fundamental problem head on: he
shows the history of Hindu obscurantism that has suppressed the rise
of science in India through the ages – the implications for the
present are clear.”

Chattopadhyaya
was somewhat of an anathema for many orthodox and conservative
scholars and they sensed that the carpet was being drawn from under
their feet by this irreverent defender of the best in Indian
tradition. That was rather paradoxical insofar as the intention of
destabilizing wholesome thought in the context of ancient India was
farthest from Debiprasad’s mind. One had only to listen to him, or
else read him, to realise how justifiably proud he was about the
richness of Indian tradition in certain respects, be it Harappan
civilization, Vedic poetry or Upanishadic thought. He mustered
courage and hard facts to openly claim that Uddalaka Aruni of
Chandogya Upanishad fame was the first experimental scientist
that the world knows of. He said it to no less a person than Joseph
Needham, the most authentic chronicler of the Culture and
Civilisation of Ancient China in eight volumes, and the latter
had to accept it in the face of the evidence that Uddalaka, the
Upanishadic celebrity of the seventh or eighth century B.C., held to
a position of “essentially a rational knowledge based on
observation and even experiment.”

Having
started his career as a college teacher in Bombay in the 1940’s,
Chattopadhyaya moved over to the City College in Kolkata very soon
and remained there till the late 1970’s when he opted out of the
job to devote himself to whole-time research and writing. Much
earlier, in the 1950’s he had gone to London to work in the
British Museum as also to obtain direct guidance through discussions
with George Thomson, the tallest scholar in ancient Greek studies in
Cambridge and subsequently in Birmingham. On an allowance which
hardly sufficed for a hand to mouth existence, he struggled on in
England and produced an unconventional masterly book on ancient
Indian materialism, named, Lokayata (1959). It was his first
major work which launched him on the national and international
philosophical scene in a big way. Even earlier, as already
mentioned, he had made a name as a poet and also as an author on a
variety of subjects for children in Bengali. The methodology as also
the reconstruction of the evolution of ancient Indian society that
Lokayata provided won its author a number of academic friends and
foes.

It
will be a futile venture to summarise the works of Debiprasad in a
brief talk or in an article running into only a few pages. Equally
difficult will it be to evaluate his works and contributions in a
summary fashion. It is, therefore, proposed to highlight only a few
aspects of his work and its methodology by way of an introduction for
further studies by those who have the inclination for it.

Debiprasad
made abundant use of both anthropology and archaeology in his
studies. In his first major work, namely, the Lokayata, there
is, for example, a chapter (ch. 2) entitled ‘The Chanting Dogs’.
Scholars have been in a quandary as to what the episode in the
Chandogya Upanishad, where the dogs figure and where they are
presented as singing and dancing, actually signifies. Many are so
amused by the episode that they dismiss the entire thing as being at
best a take on the priests. Something like a humourous imitation of
what the priests go through in the course of a sacrifice at a
particular juncture. The passage in the Chandogya (1.12) is
quite simple. Baka Dalbhya, also called ‘the grieving Maitreya
(Glaava Maitreya), witnessed a white dog being accosted by a few
other dogs with a request to get them some food by singing, whereupon
the white dog asked the other dogs to be there the next day.
Daalbhya arrived at the spot the next day to watch the proceedings,
curious as he was. So did the dogs to enact the dance while singing.
The dogs started going round and round, one behind the other, and
then produced some sounds saying “Let us eat, let us drink, let us
have food, ye gods.” The chanting and dancing closely resembled the
chanting of the Saamans by the priests in a sacrifice. Some
scholars even presumed that the dogs were holding each others’
tails, though there is hardly any tail referred to by the Upanishad.
Even Shankaracharya had interpreted it more or less the same way
while pointing out that the Upanishad decries elaborate formal
rituals in order to uphold the importance of pure knowledge, as
against rituals, to obtain liberation. Debiprasad was the very first
to see the episode in a new light. Anthropology came to his help to
recognize the dogs as men whose totem is the dog. He then dug out
other references to men as dogs in Kautilya’s Arthashastra,
the Harivamsha and the Mahabharata. For Kautilya, men
who slave like dogs for their masters are ‘dogs’, while in the
other two texts they are those who belong to a group whose ancestors
had a dog for their totem. Totemism is integrally connected with
primitive tribes as evidenced from the study of tribes from different
parts of the globe. Incidentally, what the dogs are craving for in
the Upanishadic passage is food, a dire material need for the
sustenance of life. Debiprasad observed that many seers of the
Rigveda are identified with their totemic names: as for example, the
Kashyapas, Mandukeyas, Shaunakas, Kaushikas, etc., indicating the
tortoise, frog, dog, owl, etc. as totems. After all, these seers are
descendants of the tribes of yore and they are historically placed at
a time when the tribes are gradually getting disintegrated. What is
so strange then for a totemic dance accompanied by singing which Baka
Dalbhya witnessed? A totemic collective dance of this kind might not
have been in practice any more by the time the Upanishad-s
came to be composed. The Upanishad has reminisced about a practice
which used to be in vogue at some time in the past, remote or recent.
Whether or not the priestly ritual bears any resemblance to the
totemic dance is beside the point. Does it, however, mean that one
could obtain food by dancing like the dogs did? The answer to it
again must be sought for in a tribal custom of ancient times when
magical fulfilment of the desire would be attained to precede the
actual fulfilment of the necessity. And it is a material necessity at
that. In the episode of the chanting dogs, the white dog is
presumably the elder member of the tribe under whose guidance and
leadership the tribe as a whole obtains its food. The song of the
ancient tribes is akin to what in later times was a prayer to a god
or a group of gods. The tribal ritual is the prototype of the
sophisticated sacrificial rituals of later times. Ancient Magic is
not quite identical with religion of a later period though they have
similarities to a considerable extent. As George Thomson explains,
religion “is characterised by belief in God and the practice of
prayer or sacrifice. The lowest savages known to us have no gods and
know nothing of prayer or sacrifice. Similarly, wherever we can
penetrate the prehistory of civilised peoples, we reach a level at
which again there are no gods, no prayer or sacrifice. What we find
at this level is magic.” And what is the fundamental
characteristic of ancient magic? To quote Thomson again, “magic
rests on the principle that by creating the illusion that you control
reality you can actually control it. In its initial stages it is
simply mimetic. You want rain, so you perform a dance in which you
mimic the gathering clouds, the thunderclap, and the falling shower.
You enact in fantasy the fulfilment of the desiredreality.
In its later stages the mimetic act may be accompanied by a command,
an imperative ‘Rain!’ But it is a command, not a request. This
principle of collective compulsion corresponds to a stage of
society at which the community is still an undivided whole,
supreme over each and all of its members, presenting a weak
but united front against the hostile world of nature.”

Recognition
of the said Chandogya passage as a reminiscence of an age old
practice of magic not only makes the meaning of the passage clear but
tells us abundantly about the nature of the sacrificial rituals as an
offshoot of the ancient magical practice. It will thus be possible to
understand the Purva Mimamsa system of philosophy cogently.
The gods and goddesses to whom apparently sacrificial offerings are
made just do not exist according to this system, but nevertheless the
fruit of the sacrifice is assured for the sacrificer. That is
because of the potency of the ‘word’ or mantra which
corresponds to the imprecations in early magic. Besides, the episode
of the chanting dogs corroborates part of the ancient Indian
materialist traditionfor which reason it is that Debiprasad
has referred to the episode of the dogs. There is no gainsaying that
the interpretation of the episode of the chanting dogs is a
significant development in the methodology for studying our ancient
texts, philosophical or otherwise. Incidentally, it may be noted
that the Rigveda has a number of hymns which in substance have
the ingredients of early magic, not to speak of the Atharvaveda
where we have any number of hymns which could be regarded as
‘magical’. For example, one may cite RV.10.161 (against
consumptive disease called Rajayakshma), 10.162 (against
diseases and evil spirits), 10.164 (against bad dreams), 10.166
(against rivals), and so on. From the Atharvavedaone could cite 3.6 (against enemies), 3.7 (against Yakshma),
1.22 (against heart disease), 1.25 (against fever), 5.13 (against
serpent bite), etc.

Another
innovative method advanced by Debiprasad is what he terms
‘Retrospective Probing’ as a chronological pointer. It is well
known that Lokamanya Tilak and H. Jacobi dated the Rigveda to
the third or fourth millennium B.C. on the basis of a few passages
containing some astronomical data. There are quite a few others who
have depended on similar evidences while dating other ancient texts.
The question is whether such astronomical data directly corresponds
to the period during which it is cited or whether it belongs to a
much earlier period than the one in which it has been cited. In other
words, it is possible that some astronomical data which has come down
to us as forming part of the literature of a given period might
actually be an astronomical occurrence during a much earlier period.
We cannot be too sure that the text in which the data is cited was
actually composed during the exact period when the cited astronomical
event actually transpired. That is only another way of saying that a
memory of an event of an earlier period might well be presented as a
contemporary event of the author recording the event. The assumption
in such cases by many a scholar is that “the actual date of the
observation (of the astronomical event) must be the same as that of
the literature in which it is referred to or mentioned in some form”
(History of Science and Technology in Ancient India, vol.1, p.
254). The particular instance that prompted Debiprasad to take up
this issue is the fact that the lists of the asterisms (nakshatra-s)
in various Vedic texts like the Taittiriya Samhita, Maitrayani
Samhita, etc., always begin with the Krittika-s. Why so, asked
Jacobi, and his answer was that it then coincided with the vernal
equinox. His conclusion thereupon was that Vedic culture was in
existence by roughly 3000 B.C. when this astronomical phenomenon had
occurred. That is not the end of the story because the Vedic texts
have quite a few other things to say about the Krittika-s
which make such a chronology questionable. In the Satapatha
Brahmana (ii.1.2.1-5) there is reference to a dispute as to
whether the two fires – Garhapatya and Ahavaniya – could be set
up under the Krittika-s. The six or seven stars of the
Krittika asterism are supposed to be the wives of the Seven
Stars who rise in the north. But the Krittika-srise in
the east, thereby making it impossible for the husbands to meet the
wives. It would be inauspicious, therefore, to set up fires under
the stars which never move away from the eastern quarters and
therefore never meet their husbands. The sacrificer’s ambition
might well remain unfulfilled like the ambition of the seven seers to
be with their wives! Anyway, the fact is that other asterisms may
move away from the eastern quarter but the Krittika-s do not.
The Krtittika-s are identified with Pleiades with Eta Tauri
as its determinative star. Ramatosh Sarkar, an astronomer, has
calculated that “Eta Tauri can rise exactly in the east only
when its declination is nil or when its celestial longitude is zero
and celestial latitude is negligible, i.e. roughly coinciding with
the vernal equinox” (HSTAI, vol.1, p.258). This yields 2334 B.C. as
the date for such a phenomenon. And the Satapatha Brahmana is
definitely not that old by any reckoning. The approximate date of the
SB is 1000 B.C. at which juncture the celestial longitude of Eta
Tauri was 18 degrees and odd (Ibid. p.259). Obviously, the
priests of the Satapatha Brahmana are only referring to an
astronomical knowledge that has been passed on to them from days of
yore somehow. These priests might have been as innocent as Adam as
far as astronomical observations and calculations were concerned for
all we know. Debiprasad maintains that this knowledge belonged to the
period of Harappan culture. The SB helps him to take to
‘restrospective probing’ whereby the date of Harappan culture
could be safely adduced. This date for the astronomical phenomenon
just mentioned was corroborated also by the astronomers of the Dr.
C.V. Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru whom Debiprasad had
approached for confirmation of Ramatosh Sarkar’s calculations. At
the instance of Debiprasad, the present author had the privilege of
going to the astronomers concerned for their opinion based on expert
calculations and convey the same to Dr. Chattopadhyaya for his
information. It is true that this kind of research is stimulating
although it may have nothing to add to our knowledge of philosophy,
but then Debiprasad was not only a student of philosophy but also a
historian of ancient Indian science. “A one-man brigade against
philosophical obscurantism” as he came to be called by his close
associates, Dr. Chattopadhyaya had necessarily been required to have
many irons in the fire and he had to keep stoking all of them duly
and meticulously all the time. That was the kind of academic acumen
he possessed and that deserves to be an attribute worthy of emulation
for all of us. In the world of Philosophy proper, his signal
contribution consists in establishing “Two trends of philosophy”
– namely, materialism and idealism – as an inevitable
characteristic of Indian Philosophy just as it is of world
philosophy. Other minute and subtle distinctions between different
schools of Indian Philosophy notwithstanding, the fundamental
criterion for classification of the schools ultimately has to be in
terms of the two basic differentiating points of view in philosophy
represented by materialism and idealism. Materialism in essence
asserts that objective reality is independent of subjective
consciousness, which simply means that objects have an existence of
their own irrespective of whether they are cognized by anyone or not.
This was cryptically summed up by Lenin in his classic statement that
the world was there long before there was anyone to know that the
world was there. As opposed to this point of view, Idealism in a
variety of forms posits that it is our cognition that gives
credibility to the world. The oft quoted conundrum that intends to
bring out the difference between the two runs somewhat like this:
“What is mind? – No matter. What is matter? Never mind.” As
one can see, there is nothing about matter here as both responses to
the two questions attach greater importance to mind than to matter.
So much of esoteric literature has come out on this topic over the
centuries in practically all parts of the world that no simple
propositions can be satisfactory. Dr. Chattopadhyaya had delivered
two talks under the aegis of the University of Mysore way back in
November 1976 on “Two Trends in Indian Philosophy” in which he
had discussed both streams of philosophy fairly extensively. It has
been delineated more elaborately in his “What is Living and What is
Dead in Indian Philosophy.” His emphasis is on the historical
developments in the course of the evolution of society which created
the ground for the emergence of idealism at a definite point of time.
This is true of the Indian philosophical context as much as it is
applicable in the case of, say, ancient Greek Philosophy. In the
Indian context, the contrast is best seen in Vedic literature where
during the first phase represented by the Rigveda there is
hardly any scope for idealism, whereas all intellectual efforts are
afoot in the second phase represented by the Brahmana-s and
Upanishad-s to establish the veracity of the idealistic
approach to philosophy. The absence and presence respectively of a
rigid stratification of society has much to do with the kind of
philosophical viewpoint that comes to the fore at a given point of
time. Thereafter it is a perpetual conflict between the two ways of
looking at ourselves and the world. The techniques and the relations
of production have a tremendous potentiality to advance variants of
philosophical thought, an aspect almost ignored by historians of
philosophy sometimes. There is nothing unique about ancient Indian
society, as all ancient societies had to tread more or less the same
path and come face to face with the same phenomena. Engels had
noticed long ago that “with society splitting up into classes,
there took place the divorce of thought from action – of mental
labour from manual labour – and also a sense of degradation
attached to the latter” as quoted by Chattopadhyaya (Lokayata,
p.670). That is how production relations developed. Engels
further added elsewhere in this context the following for elucidating
the impact of this development on spheres like the philosophical:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,
i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at
the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same
time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally
speaking, the idea of those who lack the means of mental production
are subject to it” (German Ideology, quoted by
Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata, p.670). This is best corroborated
by our contemporary situation in which the havoc caused by the media,
including the electronic media, the endless literary festivals where
the same thing gets repeated ad nauseam as it were. The power
and pelf of the ruling class which enables that class to sell its
none too glamorous merchandise to the gullible masses is indeed
unfathomable. Where is the wherewithal for the likes of us to
counter that propaganda machine? That class, therefore, shines as the
pace-setter in culture and philosophical thought giving the
impression that there is no other viable thinking process in our
midst. Ancient societies had their own characteristic instruments to
serve a similar purpose and philosophy was one among them. That is
the reason why Dr. Chattopadhyaya has argued vehemently in favour of
considering the socio-economic background to philosophical
disquisitions and has drawn from history to support his method. In
the specific case of the germination of idealist philosophy in India,
especially during the period of the Upanishads, he has this to say:
“The philosophical view which arose to condemn and reject life was
the result of philosophical pursuit turning away from life itself.
As with the development of slavery in ancient Greece, so also in
Upanishadic India, the lofty contempt for the material world with its
ever-shifting phenomena was the result of philosophical enquiry
taking a free flight into the realm of pure reason or pure knowledge,
i.e. knowledge divorced from action. This in turn could be possible
only when a section of the community living on the surplus produced
by another, could withdraw itself from the responsibility of the
labour of production, and therefore also from the obligation of
acknowledging the reality of the material world; for the process of
labour alone carries the sense of objective coercion on
consciousness” (Two Trends in Indian Philosophy, p.31). If
we come to think of it, there is no serious doubting of the reality
of the real world in the folk tradition, a tradition nurtured by the
working masses. We do have some talk of the theory of karma and
the like, but denial of the material world is hard to come by, for
the simple reason that cultivation of the land, need for the rains,
sowing and putting manure are inevitable processes for obtaining
yield from mother earth. The agriculturist does not have the luxury
of speculating about the unrealness of the real world. Certain
tenets of the idealist school of Vedanta are foisted even on a few
religious cults, but that hardly makes any sense, because religion in
practice does not deny the world but only tries to give an assurance
that a religious person stands every chance of gaining material
well-being in reality. Almost every such cult hankers after welfare
and seeks the blessings of some god or goddess or both for achieving
that end. Paradoxically enough, however, in the range of philosophy
the idealist school of thought has at times gained ascendency. Among
the Vedantins also we have Ramanuja, Madhva, and a number of others
for whom reality of the world we live in is no chimera. Some schools
of Buddhism and the Advaita school of Vedanta are about the only few
who insist on a purely idealist view of philosophy. All said and
done, analysis and not authority is what guides philosophical
thought. Thus, in spite of the alleged authority of the Upanishads
as understood by the author of the Brahma sutra-s and as
interpreted by the likes of Shankara, there has always been a
counterpoint to the idealist school of thought in the Indian
philosophical tradition. No amount of hectoring can wish away
philosophical materialism, which insists that objective reality is
independent of subjective consciousness, and that is true of Indian
Philosophy as well.

It
may not be out of place here to have a word on the traditional
classification of the schools of philosophy in India. It is
customary, albeit irrational, to speak of the astika and
nastika systems as if that was the last word in understanding
the nuances of Indian philosophy. This classification is not based on
analysis but on authority, which is an anathema for any academic
discipline as we have already observed. It does injustice to those
texts of Vedic literature, particularly the Rigveda and
Atharvaveda, which leave us in no doubt that their principal
purport is anything but philosophical. For the authors of these two
Vedic texts the world is unquestionably a reality and appeasing the
gods and goddesses is one way of facing the world with some
confidence and hope. What does it mean then to say that Veda is the
authority for philosophical thought and that acceptance or otherwise
of this doctrine would make the schools either astika or
nastika? What aspect of the doctrines of Nyaya and Vaiseshika
schools do we categorise as the one which is directly drawn from the
Veda? The Nyaya school would unhesitatingly declare that it
does not need the authority of the Veda to say that practice is the
criterion of truth, a cardinal idea in the Nyaya school. That
fire is an antidote to shivering in the cold is a matter of
experience and that piece of knowledge need not be authorized by the
Vedic lore. Thus agnirhimasya bheshajam of the Veda does not
need to be invoked to authenticate this knowledge. The circumstances
under which the formality of adhering to Vedic thought for the
enunciation of philosophical ideas came to be considered sacrosanct
should be explored dispassionately to call the bluff. Is it
acceptance of the ideas contained in the Veda or acceptance of
the ritualistic extravagance contained in some influential
portion of Vedic literature, namely, the Brahmana-s, which are
no more than liturgical texts, which constitutes adherence to the
Vedic thought? If it is the former, even the Lokayata-s may
not have any quarrel with it, for, after all the Rigveda
contains umpteen hymns which constantly crave for material wealth and
welfare without going through any ritualistic practices. It is the
extraordinary power of the priestly class that enables that class to
lord it over the gullible ordinary people that the Lokayata
resents, wedded as it is to the folk tradition in which early
magic is still the major factor. To what extent indeed will the
Samkhya be an astika school if adherence to Vedic
authority is the sole criterion for classification of the
philosophical systems? We shall soon acquaint ourselves with another
anomaly in this regard, but suffice it to state for the present that
this classification of philosophical schools on the basis of Vedic
authority leads us nowhere. On the other hand it has led to the
subordination of philosophy to the dictates of the law-givers or
Dharmashastrakara-s. Let us at the very outset be clear that
social dynamics and social mores during the centuries when these
law-givers gained an awful lot of influence were what they were, not
because the law-givers prescribed the rules but because society had
formed itself that way under the influence of the then prevailing
relations of production. The law-givers merely recorded the structure
society had at that given point of time. That structure could not
have been imposed by them, had the forces of production been
different. The position of the ruling authorities ably assisted by
the law-givers was such that even philosophers played second fiddle
to them. Shankaracharya, who appeared on the scene quite a few
centuries after the major law-givers had already enunciated their
doctrines and dictates, goes to the extent of saying that what Manu
has said is indeed the final word even in the realm of philosophy.
The astika – nastika classification of philosophy on the
basis of Vedic authority ultimately became a classification on the
basis of what the law-givers approved of and sanctioned. This was
decidedly a burden on philosophy which under different conditions
might have evolved quite differently.

Let
us view the classification by defining the terms differently now.
That definition also is a product of tradition. The acceptance or
rejection of god is the criterion in this scheme to differentiate
the philosophical schools. That criterion makes Samkhya, Vaiseshika
and Purva-Mimamsa schools atheistic. Nyaya would also have fitted
into the atheistic model if at some stage in the history of its
evolution god had not been foisted on it. The Jain school might well
qualify for a theistic tag if its elaborate rituals are any
indication. No matter, therefore, how we define the two terms astika
and nastika the classification as it stands looks incongruous.
The only sensible thing to do is thus to consider philosophy as
philosophy and make the alleged authority of the Veda for purposes of
classifying philosophical ideas infructuous. The only alternative
then for us for classifying the schools is to broadly consider them
as either materialist or idealist and make them autonomous instead of
allowing them to be judged with the yardstick of the law-givers.

There
is another good reason why we should go along these lines. Under the
traditional classification, both Samkhya and Advaita are astika
systems and yet the latter shreds the former into pieces as it
considers that system its most preposterous opponent. Samkhya is the
finalist in the wrestling bout for Shankara who gives him the
nomenclature of the pradhanamalla. Why should two systems
equally devoted to Vedic authority be at loggerheads so
fundamentally? It is obvious that ‘Vedic authority’ is no more
than a formality and the philosophical schools are expected to fall
in line to be on the right side of the presumptive custodians of the
Vedic lore, namely, the law-givers who are steadfast in defending the
vertical division of society. The long and short of it is that
philosophy has been appropriated ‘for justifying the ways of the
law-givers to society’ if using an expression of Milton is at all
pardonable. If we rid ourselves of such extraneous factors for the
classification and study of the schools of Indian philosophy a whole
storehouse opens itself up. Besides, the absurdity of the
traditional a-historical and a-philosophical classification could
well be a thing of the past. But the absurdity does not really end
with it as there are a few other absurdities we may be required to
sort out.

The
Brahma sutra-s in a way regimented the study of the Upanishads
by insisting that the entire compendium of the Upanishads has but one
idea to convey by and large. The apparent differences in the ideas
advanced in the different Upanishads, this text said, should be
reconciled appropriately (1.1.4: Tat tu samanvayat). In any case,
this text does recognise variety of ideas in the Upanishads, but is
somehow not inclined to accept this variety. It is more at home with
straitjacketing. The euphemistic name given to that is
‘reconciliation.’ Not long after this text there emerged the
Bhagavadgita which also purports to be derived from the
Upanishads (Sarvopanishado gavah). But where was the problem in
accepting the Upanishads as pluralistic in the matter of ideas
regarding reality and evaluate the variety of ideas thrown up in the
Upanishads? More than a century ago R.G. Bhandarkar raised this
question and said in so many words that the Upanishads contain
numerous ideas regarding what constitutes reality. A few others
opined similarly. But catholicity of ideas has been deftly opposed
by our scholars who continue to bask in the sunshine of the Brahma
sutra-s, on which there are more than half a dozen ‘authentic’
commentaries, each of them stoutly asserting that its own
understanding of the text is the only genuine meaning of the text.
Possibly, we have to attempt to reconcile those opposing
interpretations also in the true spirit of the Brahma sutra-s! Why
has this rigidity set in when the Upanishads themselves did not
revere any one single opinion on ever so many philosophical
questions? Is there some apprehension of any rival school of
philosophy gaining ground because of which a reconciled unity of
ideas is considered necessary to protect the philosophical fort? The
answer seems to be in the positive and it is the Buddha whom the
Brahma sutra-s and the Gita obviously defend themselves
against. The orthodox opinion of the priestly class which ruled the
roost in the then deeply entrenched vertical society faced a
formidable challenge from the Buddha, the Lokayata-s and quite a few
other schools on the fringe. The Brahma sutra-s seeks to
perform the task of forging a united philosophical front in the face
of heterodox opinion which undermines the interests of the ruling
class of which the priestly class is a component. The so called
‘ekarthata’ of the Upanishads is thus a constructed phenomenon
which the Upanishads themselves do not mind rejecting outright.
Historically also there could not have been a single approach to
questions of philosophy, considering the fact that the Upanishads
were not composed by any one individual at any one given locality at
a specific point of time. They were products of a few centuries and
the thinkers belonged to different places from the ‘Aryavarta’ to
the Gangetic plains. None of the so called acharya-s who
wrote commentaries on the Upanishads, the Brahma sutra-s
and the Gita ever raised such simple questions. They blindly
followed the directives of the Brahma sutra-s and the
law-givers and thus acted as active intellectual defenders of the
orthodoxy in our vertical society.

There
is scope for illustrating this with one example here. Dr.
Chattopadhyaya has assigned the role of a pioneer experimental
scientist at the global level to Uddalaka Aruni of the Chandogya
Upanishad fame for upholding a philosophical position which was
anything but idealistic and for having demonstrated it with a series
of observations and experimental demonstrations. The formulations of
Uddalaka are not far different from what the atomists
(paramanu-vadins) during subsequent times advocated and they
all fall within the sphere of the philosophical materialists. “How
can being evolve from non-being?” (katham asatah sat jayeta) asks
Uddalaka which is precisely the question that the Samkhya-s posed.
But the Brahma sutra-s and the later acharya-s are all
eager to have one uniform idea of reality as the substance of the
Upanishads and therefore do not mind converting the materialist
Uddalaka into an ardent seeker of Brahman. They do not have
the patience to see that Uddalaka never once uttered the word Brahman
while explaining his philosophical concepts to his son Svetaketu. It
is to the credit of Dr. Chattopadhyaya that he had the courage of
conviction to swim against the wild current built up over centuries
of philosophical scholarship in our country and place philosophical
enquiry on a sound footing. That is the fruit of enviable research
acumen. It may at this juncture be proper to proceed to take up
another question which Debiprasad has discussed fairly
comprehensively in many of his works. The question concerns the role
of superstitious ideas and fostering such beliefs with a definite
purpose.

It
is a strange paradox that philosophy which seeks knowledge of reality
quite often panders to some base emotions of the people by not only
supporting but also actively creating superstitious beliefs. All
superstitions are logically invalid and most of them could well be
dismissed under the error called post hocergo propter hoc
(after this, therefore because of this). The so called omens
come under this category. Why are seekers of truth fascinated by
gross superstitions? Plato and others are classic examples for this
model of philosophers turned propagators of superstitions.
Plato blatantly supported the idea of disseminating what he called
‘beneficial falsehood’ which is euphemism for crass superstition.
That was his solution to what he considered was a problem with the
youth of his times. The youth did not simply fall in line with the so
called established norms. They questioned the legitimacy of certain
ideas and that irked Plato a lot. His antidote to this was to plant
‘beneficial falsehoods’ in the minds of all such potential
dissenters. In the Indian context we have a plethora of superstitions
nurtured not only by religion but also by philosophy. Orthodox Indian
philosophers took cudgels against the Lokayata principally
because it sought to attribute motives to the priestly class for
fostering superstitious cults among the people. It is an irony that
philosophers who swear by logic (tarka or nyaya) while
demolishing their opponents ignore that very logic when parrot-like
they sing panegyrics to the dictates of the law-givers on matters
outside the purview of the law-givers. Shankara says that ‘what
Manu says is the final word.’ And that on matters
philosophical. In other words, philosophers do not hesitate to fall
into the trap of superstitions. It is alright for Kautilya to
advocate the innovative use of superstitions to empower the ruler
because it is his mission to keep the people subjugated, but
philosophers profess to help the people to obtain liberation. Why
then should they forge chains in their workshops to keep the minds of
the people under control? Debiprasad has discussed this question at
great length in many of his works, especially in his What is
Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy. He has a whole
chapter on ‘the Social Function of Superstition’ in that work of
his. There is the philosophy for keeping minds under check and there
also is the philosophy to emancipate the minds from the clutches of
dry orthodoxy. In fact, in addition to the classification of
philosophy as either materialist or idealist, it is time that we
also categorise philosophy according to whether or not it positions
itself in the bandwagon of superstition, for the simple reason that
superstition and true knowledge can never go together. A misconceived
belief system and the quest after truth are diametrically opposed to
each other. Nyaya philosophy which lays emphasis on the nuances of
logical thinking and Lokayata which collides head on with everything
that borders on superstition provide people with the weapons of
criticism to steer clear of superstitions. Historians of Indian
philosophy who are prepared for a confrontation with superstitious
ideas are not too many, even when such ideas form an integral part of
the philosophical doctrines that different schools of philosophy
profess. Dr. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya is happily an exception to
this and it behoves us to follow in his footsteps if we want
philosophy to be truly an accessory to people’s emancipation.
Emancipation itself is quite frequently defined in abstract terms
insofar as the summom bonum of life is to be a worthy servant
of the great master called God, as in the philosophies of Ramanuja
and Madhva. Bhakti and Prapatti are terms which have
been made popular among the votaries of these schools and
many other schools have emulated them. This is a case of philosophy
being wedded to a specific religious order. Philosophical
Materialism is one school that does not have to fall back upon divine
intervention for emancipation. The pragmatic philosophy of the
Buddha with its doctrine of the pratitya samutpada comes very
close to that approach.

Dr. G Ramkrishna is the Chief Editor of Hosatu, a
progressive periodical in Kannada. He was Professor of English at
National College, Bangalore and a Visiting Professor at Kannada
University, Hampi. He is the author a number of books in Kannada and
English including The Strange Culture of M.S. Golvalkar, The Living Marx, and Philosophy in China (in English), The features of the Anti-Fascist Movement, RSS – A Poisonous Tree, On Hindutva (Kannda)
Email ID: dgrkrishna@gmail.com